Remember Crowd Noise Rules years ago?

So I was showing my son the old Dolphins Bears Monday night game from 1985 on YouTube and there were a few times when the Bears QB was complaining about the crowd noise and the ref was pausing the game waiting for them to quiet down. I had almost completely forgotten about that whole issue. I remember they used to go as far as actually calling penalties on the home crowd. What a dumb ass rule that was.

Whatever happened to that, did they just stop enforcing it? Seems like these days crowd noise is encouraged and if anything people make fun of some crowds for being too quiet.

Wow. I forgot about those days. Great question.

Crowds are busy on their phones. Plus, they shut down all the piped in noise except for the NJ Jete where they still allow canned laughter to be piped in.

Here's an interesting article that explains some of your question.

For N.F.L., Crowd Noise Has Become a Headache

The cynical answer is Bill Polian had it done away with when they started pumping in crowd noise.

Reminds me of this game from a long time ago.